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"A series of seismic surveys for oil and gas planned for the mid- and southeastern Atlantic coastal areas of the United States pose a substantial threat to one of the world’s most endangered whale species, according to a group of renowned marine mammal scientists urging a halt to the surveys in a statement released today."

"Three 1,000lb bombs detonated underwater by the Royal Navy were to blame for the mass stranding and deaths of a pod of pilot whales on the north coast of Scotland in 2011, it has emerged.The resulting noise damaged their sensitive hearing and navigational ability, causing confusion amongst the pod, and resulting in them accidentally travelling towards the beach where they ultimately died. "

"Military sonar is a contentious issue among environmental and animal rights activists. The sound waves from military-grade sonar, which the navy uses to hunt submarines, cankill or otherwise impair marine mammals that rely on sound to communicate, hunt, and navigate. And Kaulakahi Channel, with its sizable cetacean population and strong military presence, is on the front lines."

Following is a distraction from real reasons! Yet another proof that NewScientist is not for science but for imperial propaganda!
All you need to know about whale strandings in the UK and Europe

5. Proceedings of the Seismic and Marine Mammals Workshop London 23-25 June 1998
Environmentalism actors of lobby trojans like WWF, Greenpeace and the other rat pack may claim "we don't no why whales behave that way" but they are part of the crime gang.

In a "workshop" sponsored by the oil and gas drilling industry representatives of "science", the NGOs and governments "discussed" about the oceanic drilling methods and the impact of "seismic blasting" on mammals, ignoring all the other fauna and flora of the oceans.

However they admit that they don't have enough information, have not done research, cannot save sea mammals from death and damage, but will go on detonating and drilling for mineral oil explorations.

"The visual senses that many terrestrial mammals rely on are therefore of limited use under water. Sound however, propagates very efficiently through water and marine mammals use sound fora wide range of tasks, for instance to locate prey, to detect predators, for social interaction such as mating displays and herd cohesion, for long range communication and perhaps even for long range navigation. Many marine mammal species have evolved highly specialised acoustic senses. Although there are interspecific differences in the hearing ranges of marine mammals, all thosestudied to date have highly sensitive hearing over a wide frequency range (see Richardson et al. (1995) for a general review of marine mammal hearing).""Under certain conditions sound signals may propagate over very large distances. For example, in preliminary trials of acoustic tomography, a series of small (8 kg) TNT charges were detonated off south-west Africa. In air, such detonations might be visible and audible at a few kilometres. In the water, the detonations were clearly detectable, above background levels at Bermuda, more than 9,000 km away. Obviously, such tests are designed to maximise transmission ranges, but other marine operations may inadvertently produce sounds that propagate over large distances."

"A wide range of human activities generate sound in the water, e.g. general shipping, ice breakers, aircraft, oil and gas drilling and production operations, geophysical surveys, explosions, military and civilian sonars and some oceanographic science studies. Many of these sources will be detectable at long range.""This rapid change may have profound implications for marine mammals which evolved in a very different, much quieter acoustic environment."

"Whether it has an effect will depend on the characteristics of the marine mammal itself, whether it is likely to be within the zone of audibility (Richardson et al. 1995), how it behaves naturally, how it responds to stimuli, whether it is constrained to be in an area, whether its behaviour patterns, its mating system, its hunting strategies are likely to be affected etc. ."

There has been an increase in levels of sound from oil and gas activity in the north-east Atlantic in recent years. One such activity is seismic exploration. The north-east Atlantic is important for a number of marine mammals which use sound for a variety of purposes vital to their existence."Concerns have therefore been raised by regulators,non-governmental organisations and the general public about the possible impacts of seismic operations on marine mammals. In order to help develop a common understanding of the interactions between seismic operations and marine mammals, a workshop was held in London on 23-25 June 1998. This book originated in working papers developed for this workshop. Just under 100 delegates attended the workshop drawn from across industry, government, academic and NGO communities, and from several countries."

"The meeting was sponsored by the Atlantic Margin Joint Industry Group (AMJIG), the group of hydrocarbon companies with interests in oil exploration to the north and west of Scotland and the International Association of Geophysical Contractors (IAGC), the industry body for seismic exploration contractors. It was endorsed by the UK Department of Trade and Industry, and the UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). The steering group for the workshop was composed of staff from oil industry, governmental advisors and both governmental and non-governmental scientists.""Theoretically sound propagates through water in accordance with certain formulae, however circumstances usually mean than theory is not reflected in reality."

"The effectiveness of these mitigation measures has been little studied."

"The dictionary definition for the word seismic means “of or relating to an earthquake” and indeed it comes from the Greek word seismos meaning an earthquake. In its broad scholarly or teaching sense this is what seismic study is about. It involves earthquake measurement, monitoring and prediction, mostly on a large scale, involving fairly big movements in the earth’s crust. What is measured are the actual energy waves created by the earthquakes and the terrible and destructive effect of these waves close to where the earth’s crust actually moved are familiar to us all.""In seismic surveying, geophysicists use the same basic ideas as the earthquake seismologists, but the situation is turned upside down. Instead of waiting for the earthquake, and measuring the energy waves associated with it, waves are mechanically generated and sent into the earth. This energy wave doesn’t just vanish into the earth’s crust. Some of it is reflected back to the surface and the returning waves are detected with sensitive measuring devices that accurately record the strength of the wave and the time it has taken to travel through the various layers in the earth’s crust and back to the surface.""One of the most common uses is in the search for hydrocarbon resources, gas and oil, and most commercial seismic surveying is carried out in this energy sector."

"Oil and gas exploration takes place all over the earth’s surface. It can be generally considered as falling into the two main zones:" "1) Onshore or Land Exploration; and 2) Offshore or Marine Exploration""There is a third zone, which is currently of lesser commercial significance. This is commonly called Shallow Water Exploration, but is also sometimes referred to as Transition Zone Exploration. This involves shallow water areas such as tidal zones, river estuaries or swamplands. Exploration activities in these areas can be very complex."

"It is during the approach to the line start, that environmental protection procedures may be applicable. Depending on the country of operationsand the area-specific environmental controls in place, a visual watch for marine mammals from the vessel may be ongoing for at least 30 minutesbefore the first firing of the airguns. On some surveys, acoustic methods may additionally be utilised to identify the presence of marine mammals within the vicinity of the airgun array. It is only when the crew has been informed that no marine mammals are present that the survey line can proceed with the firing of the airguns."

"When the line is complete, all systems stop recording. The ship is now in line change mode. The navigator has planned how the vessel should manoeuvre to get into the run in for the next line.The line change time varies according to the layout of the survey and the configuration of the equipment but is usually between one and three hours."

"During the changeover period, all the crew involved work quickly to resolve any problems and make modifications or repairs in readiness for the next line. The run in is then started, all equipment is readied, the guns fire and the cycle repeats."

"Infrequently, technical failures occur and line starts are delayed or lines are terminated early. Operations may also be affected by weather, shipping and oceanographic conditions."

"In some specialised surveys, this bandwidth can be increased, for example when looking at the shallow surface geology in preparation for siting platforms."

"Total energy source volumes vary from survey to survey and are designed to provide sufficient seismic energy to illuminate the geological objective of the survey, whilst minimising environmentaldisturbance.""... all seismic in-Round areas are subject to the JNCC (Joint Nature Conservation Committee) ‘Guidelines for Minimising Acoustic Disturbance to Marine Mammals’. These Guidelines have been in place, and formed part of licence conditions, since 1995. The current version of the Guidelines includes the following summarised points:""1) Before starting a survey line, operators and observers should carefully make a visual check to see if there are any cetaceans within 500 m of the airguns. If cetaceans are present, the start of the survey should be delayed until the animals have moved away, allowing adequate time after the last sighting(30 minutes) for the animals to move well out of range. Hydrophonesmay also be useful in determining when cetaceans have moved out of range i.e. when they can no longer be heard.""2) Power should be built up slowly from a low energy start-up over 30 mins, to give adequate time for cetaceans to leave the vicinity.""3) Throughout the survey, the lowest practicable energy levels should be used.""4) Details of watches and marine mammal sightings should be recorded using standardised forms."

"All seismic acquisition contractors have agreed to conduct survey operations in the UK in accordance with these guidelines and haveemployed marine mammal observers on their vessels. The JNCC have reported that the data that has been gathered from seismic vessels in the Atlantic margin in recent years has added significantly to their knowledge of cetacean population distributions in the area."

"The rate of progress for a seismic survey is constrained by many factors but the most dominant is usually the weather. Other issues that affect the duration of a specific survey are:"

"

Survey location

Time of year

Survey size, particularly sail line length

Technical acquisition parameters

Vessel configuration

Line orientation and prevailing current direction

Fishing and shipping activity in the survey area

Other seismic operations

Marine mammal activity

Drilling and subsea equipment maintenance

Technical equipment downtime

"

"The net effect of all of these factors is to limit the time actually spent acquiring seismic data to just 35-40% of the available time."

"A survey vessel typically operates at a tow speed of between 4.5 and 5.0 knots (approximately 9 kms/hr). At this rate, the survey vessel could conceivably cover some 216 kms in a day and almost 6,500 kms in one month. As survey dimensions are not usually as great as 200 kms, the vessel must turn at the end of each line before starting the next, the 3D ‘racetrack’."

"With seismic streamers as long as 6,000 mbeing towed behind the vessel, and with as many as 16 streamers being towed simultaneously, the time taken to change direction, so called line change time, is of the order of 3 hrs or more, which is significant. For a survey with a 45 km line length, which is fairly long even by today’s standards, the line acquisition time of 5 hrs is then followed by a line change of 3 hrs or 60% of the acquisition time.It thus follows that when a vessel acquires more than 100 traverse kms in a single day, it is considered very productive.

"For a survey with a shallow depth of target, the need to record high frequencies, up to 100 Hz, necessitates the use of shallow tow depths for the streamer. This increases the effect of wave noise, thus rendering the operation more prone to weather downtime. If the survey objective were deeper, then deeper streamer depths could be used and the productivity of the operation would improve."

"Marine mammal activity can also delay the start of a line, in accordance with the JNCC Guidelines. However as a result of careful planning, this has not been a significant factor to date."

"The dominant frequencies of seismic soundsources overlap directly those used by baleen whales (10 Hz-1 kHz) for obtaining information about their environment and communicating with one another. Information on the behavioural effects of seismic testing is limited almost exclusively to two species: the bowhead whale in the Beaufort Sea and the grey whale off the Californian coast."

"Unfortunately, for no baleen whale species is there is a direct measure of hearing sensitivity, and the overlap in frequencies has to be inferred from the range of sound frequencies used by a particular species. The greatest amount of energy emitted from a seismic airgun is in the frequency band 20-160 Hz. Bowheadwhales produce sounds mainly over the range 25 Hz to 400 Hz. Blue and fin whales operate generally at the lower end of thesefrequencies, i.e. 10-60 Hz. We might therefore expect to see species differences among baleen whales in the extent to which they respond to seismic activities. Research on the rorqual whales(such as blue, fin and minke whale) is badly neededto elucidate this."

"The hearing of odontocetes (porpoises, dolphins and toothed whales) is most sensitive over the frequency range 10-150 kHz, i.e. around one hundred times higher than the frequencies of baleen whales, and outside the peak energy range of seismic airguns. One might therefore predict that they would be much less susceptible to seismic sound than baleen whales. On the other hand, airgun arrays can also produce significant sound at frequencies ranging from 1-20 kHz, and those frequencies would certainly overlap with the hearing range of odontocetes, and at short istances particularly mask their ability to communicate with one another. Insufficient studies have been carried out to determine the significance of seismic sound for odontocetes, but acoustic and visual surveys in the Irish Sea showed temporary displacement for small cetacean populations."

"Behavioural reactions of cetaceans to loud sounds have included cessation of feeding, resting, or social interaction; changes in surfacing, respiration and diving cycles; and direct avoidanceby diving and/or swimming away. However, the significance of these short-term responses to the overall well-being of an individual or population in the longer term remains unknown."

"Direct physical damage to the ear has been implicated recentlyfrom post-mortem examination of humpback whales exposed to loud noises. However, in the case of seismic airguns this is likely to be a problem only at very short distances, in the order of low hundreds of metres (or received sound levels around 220 dB)."

"For at least some baleen whale species, the zone of influence (in terms of eliciting behavioural avoidance) of a typical seismic airgun array may be predicted to span distances ranging from c. 2.5 to 8 km. This assumes that sound is propagated according to the law of spherical spreading, which may be reasonable at those ranges. However, in many circumstances, sound transmission loss may not mirror classical laws of spherical or cylindrical spreading because of reflection from the water surface and the sea bed, and scattering or absorption with planktonic organisms in the water column."

"Those measurements should be conducted in the particular area where the seismic survey is taking place, rather than extrapolated from one region to another, since topographic and oceanographic differences between areas may be important."

"There are four ways in which the effects of seismic sound upon cetaceans could be minimised:""1) Seismic surveys could be confined to those seasons where cetaceans are known to be at low abundance in the area;""2) Airgun detonation might only be undertakenonce the survey area had been searched for cetaceans and none detected;""3) Power from seismic equipment may be built up slowly (e.g. by starting with the smallest airgun in the array and gradually adding in others over a period of 20-30 mins);""4) Sound levels are kept to the lowest practicable level."

"However, each of these aspects has a number of practical problems mitigating against their effective operation. First, different species of cetaceans occupy particular areas at different seasons so that choosing a specific period for seismic surveys may still affect some species. In this instance it will be necessary to reach some compromise, giving priority to those species with vulnerable conservation status and/or most sensitive to the dominant sound frequencies and hence most likely to be affected by them."

"Second, effective surveying of an area for marine mammals before starting seismic activities is not necessarily practical. Some species such as beaked whales tend only to be detected visually in calmweather, whilst if the animals are silent, they will also not be detected acoustically. Some species may also vocalise mainly at particular times of year in association with specific behaviour patterns."

"Third, although by gradual build-up of sound it is possible to give animals the opportunity to move away from the sound source, there remains the danger that they could habituate to the sounds andremain in the area if it was important for feeding or some other important activity."

"Finally, even if seismic surveys use the lowest practicable sound levels, those studies that have been undertaken to date indicate that behavioural avoidance by baleen whales occurs at levels of 160- 170 dB which may affect animals anywhere from 0.5 to 8 km distance away (Table 5.1, from Evans & Nice 1996). There will rarely be occasions that seismic surveys can take place without affecting at least some individuals."

"The key question is whether any such negative effectswill actually lead to changes in life history parameters such as survival or reproductive rates that might result in population decline."

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